Investigating the Role of Palestinians and Arabs in the Holocaust

The claim that Palestinians and Arabs had nothing to do with the Holocaust is false.

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On Oct. 24, 2015, Ha’aretz columnist Chemi Shalev criticized an “ostensibly academic” article entitled “Palestinians, Arabs, and the Holocaust,” that appeared in the Jewish Political Studies Review in March 2015, written by Prof. Joseph S. Spoerl, Professor of Philosophy at St. Anselm College, in Manchester, New Hampshire. Spoerl writes:

The claim that Palestinians and Arabs had nothing to do with the Holocaust is false. In fact, Arab and Palestinian leaders played a significant role in aiding and abetting the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews in Europe and they hoped to implement the genocide in the Middle East. A growing number of publications, including extensive original, high-quality archival scholarship, proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt. Among the major authors are: Zvi Elpeleg, Klaus Gensicke, Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cuppers, Matthias Kuntzel, Jeffrey Herf, Wolfgang Schwanitz, and Barry Rubin.

A careful examination of this history shows that…the Arab-Israel War of 1947-9…was a war of self-defense against a ruthless, pro-Nazi, and openly genocidal Palestinian leadership that enjoyed enormous popularity among the Arab and Palestinian masses….If [the Palestinians] cared about justice, they would apportion a substantial share of the blame for the nakba or “catastrophe” of 1948 to themselves and would admit the existence of widespread Jew-hatred in the Arab and Islamic world and its role in undermining peace between Jews and Arabs from the 1920s to the present.

The historical role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, his active collaboration with Nazi Germany, its consequences and living legacy are subjects that need to be discussed honestly and in depth, independently of the constraints of politics and political correctness.

For a contrasting view on this issue, see a book review by Johannes Houwink ten Cate, Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Amsterdam, of Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, in the Jewish Political Studies Review.

Joel Fishman

Dr. Joel Fishman is a historian and Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. He received his doctorate in modern European history from Columbia University and has carried out post-doctoral studies at the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation in Amsterdam. He has published on political warfare, devoting special attention to the cultural environment in which it is waged. At the Jerusalem Center he served as editor-in-chief of the Jewish Political Studies Review. He is the author of the pioneering contribution, “Ten Years since Oslo: The PLO’s ‘People’s War’ Strategy and Israel’s Inadequate Response,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Jerusalem Viewpoints No. 503, 1 September 2003.

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